Lauren Willig - [Pink Carnation 04]

by The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

  Scrubbing her hands hastily against her skirt, she eased one hand gently beneath Vaughn’s head. The short hairs prickled against her fingers. His head weighed against her hand like lead, entirely inert.

  “I don’t care,” she whispered to him, leaning her lips close to his ear. “I don’t care how many wives you have. If you pull through this, you can have a hundred more. Just don’t die. Please.”

  If he heard her, he gave no sign.

  Where was the boy with the chair? There were so many places for a would-be assassin to hide among the crowds. Even the very tree above their heads. In the background, the martial clamor rattled on, with the clatter of hooves, the rat-tat-tat of the drums, the shrill cry of the horn. No one would notice a cry in the midst of the cacophany. Even the sound of a shot would be entirely inaudible beneath the gabble of the crowd and the screech of the pipes and drums.

  “I’ve brought ’em,” the boy announced.

  Behind the boy stood two men, in the traditional livery of the chairman, a loose blue kersey coat over black breeches, with large cocked hats shading their faces. Between them, they held a black box with long, springy poles threaded through metal brackets on the side. It was a far cry from Vaughn’s own sedan chair, painted in shiny black lacquer and chased with silver, but it would have to do. Closed up in the box, he should be safe from harm—or, at least, safe from further harm.

  “There was an accident,” Mary said imperiously, emptying her handful of coins into the boy’s palm. The boy scampered happily away, taking the remains of her quarter’s allowance with him. “Move him gently.”

  The chairman regarded her laconically. “It’ll be extra if he bleeds on the cushions, like.”

  “It will be nothing unless you move him,” said Mary acidly. “Now.”

  With a shrug to show what he thought of uppity wenches, the chairman leaned over, his blue kersey coat flapping about his calves, and hoisted Vaughn up by the armpits.

  “Both of you!” snapped Mary. “Gently!”

  With an expression of extreme martyrdom, the second chairman reluctantly grasped Vaughn’s legs. Together, the two men shifted him through the opening between the poles into the chair. Ignoring the chairman’s protests that his vehicle was meant for one, Mary climbed in after him, pressing Vaughn’s head protectively against her shoulder.

  “Vaughn House,” she commanded, cutting through the man’s protests. “In Belliston Square.”

  “Don’t think I know where Vaughn House is?” muttered the chairman rebelliously beneath his breath, but he picked up the front poles as his comrade picked up the back, hoisting their burden into the air.

  Easing an arm around Vaughn’s shoulders to hold him steady, Mary fussed over his bandage. The chairman’s cavalier treatment had shifted it upwards, and the wadded mass that had once been her reticule was sticking out beneath one end, heavy with blood.

  Vaughn, she had no doubt, would have a perfect quotation for the occasion, something about a pound of flesh, or taking one’s price in blood.

  Mary blinked, hard. From the dust in the road, of course. It was a singularly dusty drive, and the windows of the sedan chair didn’t keep the dust out as they ought.

  On the street, as if from a continent away, people went about their business, unaware that inside the sedan chair the entire world hung pendant over a dark abyss, suspended by nothing more than the fragile thread of Vaughn’s weak breathing. From the gates of the park, weaving through the traffic with the ease of long practice, rode Lady Hester Standish, looking like a self-satisfied cossack in her fur-trimmed red habit. Mary caught a glimpse of black boot beneath a muddied hem as she rode by, her legs on a level with the window.

  On the opposite corner an ink seller hawked his ink, as black as Vaughn’s hair, dulled now with dirt and sweat and the sticky moisture from her bloody hands. A drably dressed man, ledger clamped under his arm, scurried in the front of the chair, causing the chairmen to veer sharply to avoid him, eliciting a low groan from Vaughn as he was flung against the side of the chair.

  Mary clutched him closer, silently urging the chairmen on. Once away from the congestion around the park, the trip to Vaughn House went quickly. When the chairmen started to let down their burden at the foot of the stairs, Mary poked sharply at the chairman’s back.

  “Inside,” she ordered. Leaning out the window, she addressed the two liveried servants holding open the door. “Your master has been hurt. Call a surgeon.”

  The white-wigged servants shifted uneasily at their posts as the chairmen lumbered through with their human burden.

  “What are you waiting for?” Mary snapped at the one nearest her window. “Don’t just stand there goggle-eyed. Your master needs a surgeon. Go!”

  The man’s mouth opened and closed like a guppy. Vaughn’s footmen had evidently been chosen for appearance rather than intelligence. Aunt Imogen would approve.

  It was with some relief that Mary noted the approach of the same superior personage who had done his best to deny her access two weeks before. It would have been beneath his dignity to scurry. Instead, Vaughn’s butler strode forward, every lineament radiating outrage at this crude invasion of his well-polished precinct.

  “Lord Vaughn has been hurt,” Mary said crisply. “He needs to be placed in his bedchamber. Where is it?”

  The butler stared owlishly down at the window of the sedan chair, clearly less than pleased to be having a conversation with a conveyance. “This is most irregular, madam. If madam would be so good as to—”

  Mary froze him with a glance. “Is your dignity worth your master’s death?”

  The butler stepped aside. “Up the stairs, third door on your left.”

  Accepting this new direction philosophically, the chairmen began to ascend the great, spiral stair, which twined around a fourteen-foot-high statue of Hercules wrestling with snakes. The chair tilted backwards at a dizzying angle as they spiraled upwards. Through the window of the chair, Mary could see Hercules, with his club in one hand and the neck of a snake in the other, lion skin slung over one shoulder, spinning around and around. At long last, the chairmen reached the landing, bringing the chair level. Stiff-legged, they marched down the hall to the third door on the left, where the butler, who must have raced up the back stairs to get there before them, thrust open the door.

  “The surgeon?” Mary demanded though the window of the chair.

  “Has been sent for,” the butler assured her, indicating to the chairmen where they were to set down their burden.

  Mary had only a confused impression of large seashells and a great deal of blue velvet before the chair came to a stop in the middle of the room, the chairmen’s dusty boots leaving dark prints on the pristine pastels of the carpet beneath their feet. They set down the chair with a thump. The butler reached out a hand to help her out, but Mary wafted him aside, motioning him to take Vaughn instead.

  “He needs two men to move him,” she directed. “Whatever you do, do not take him beneath the arms.”

  “Right stroppy one, ain’t she?” muttered the chairman.

  The butler ignored him, saying impassively, “Yes, madam. You.” He snapped his fingers at the chatty chairman. “Take his feet.”

  “And there’s another one for you,” grumbled the chairman, but he did as he was told.

  Together, the butler and the senior chairman eased Vaughn between the front poles, carrying him up to the bed, which rested on a raised dais in the French style. Braced between them, Vaughn looked like a prop in a play, a wax figure of a man. One hand fell limply over the side, the once-bright white lace grimed with dirt and dried blood. Only the diamond on his bloodless finger gleamed with its accustomed luster, and its very dazzle seemed a mockery.

  Mary scrambled out of the chair after them. Kicking her skirts impatiently out of the way, she lurched to her feet and hurried up the two steps to the dais, as the butler settled Vaughn upon the impeccable blue silk counterpane, moving with all the grave deliberation of an unde
rtaker laying out a corpse. He looked remarkably small in the vast expanse of the bed, his skin nearly as pasty as the two marble nymphs propping up the elaborately curved seashell that formed the headboard.

  Vaughn’s fingers flexed weakly against the silk of the counterpane.

  All but bowling over the butler to get to his side, Mary grasped his hand. His fingers felt miserably cold.

  “Mary…,” he said weakly.

  Mary’s throat constricted uncomfortably.

  “I refuse to enact a touching deathbed scene,” she said harshly. “You’re not dying.”

  Vaughn’s lips twisted up in the ghost of a smile. “If you…say so.”

  His eyes drifted downwards, taking in the blood streaking the front of her formerly white gown.

  “‘Who would have thought the old man would have so much blood in him?’” he murmured, and lapsed back against the pillow, his face as white as the linen beneath his head.

  “Madam?” It was the butler, at the foot of the dais. “The surgeon has arrived.”

  A portly man in a plain black coat and breeches shouldered around him, using his battered leather bag to clear the way in front of him, as though he were used to forcing his way through to the scene of accidents. His wig was askew, sitting sideways on his wide forehead. It was an old-fashioned wig, of the woolly variety. It had presumably better suited the sheep.

  Seeing Mary, the surgeon stopped short, looking her up and down with professional detachment.

  “Is this the patient?” he asked.

  Considering the bloodstains streaking her gown, his question was not entirely unjustified.

  “The patient is over there,” Mary said, all but shoving the surgeon up onto the dais. “There was an accident. Involving a bullet.”

  The doctor shot her a sideways glance from beneath his wig, as his hands busied themselves untying Mary’s makeshift bandage. “I find such accidents generally occur at dawn.”

  “This one didn’t,” Mary said flatly. “My…cousin had taken me to see the troops in Hyde Park. One of the recruits was overexcited, and accidentally fired into the crowd.”

  If the doctor questioned the story or the relationship, he gave no indication of it. He was too busy cutting through the matted layers of cloth covering Vaughn’s chest, peeling them carefully back. Despite his old-fashioned wig, he did seem to know his trade. His eyes were keen as he poked about at Vaughn’s side, muttering to himself as he did. Whatever he was doing caused Vaughn’s hands to clench the sheets, drops of sweat standing out against his brow as he arched with pain.

  “There will be worse to come,” said the doctor, in response to Mary’s indignant stare. “You might want to remove yourself, Miss…?”

  “Isn’t there something you can do for him?” demanded Mary. “To relieve the pain?”

  Rummaging in his bag, the doctor produced a small brown bottle. “Tincture of opium mixed with spirits of wine. Use it sparingly, unless you want him sleeping until the next trump.”

  There was no time for such niceties as glasses. Tipping back his head, Mary lifted the small bottle to Vaughn’s lips.

  The doctor did something else to Vaughn’s side, and he jerked beneath Mary’s hands, sending a stream of thick, reddish brown liquid cascading down the side of his lips. Blotting it with the end of the sheet, Mary examined Vaughn’s face anxiously. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was irregular, but he managed to open his cracked lips wide enough to mouth what looked like “thank you” before his body arched again with pain.

  Mary rounded on the doctor, who lifted a bloody sponge from the wound and dropped it with a cavalier plop into the slop jar.

  “Your friend was fortunate,” commented the doctor, drawing the edges together and skewering them with a thick needle threaded with cotton thread. Vaughn’s body twitched in response. “It’s a good, clean wound.”

  It looked anything but clean to Mary, with blood sluggishly oozing between the jagged edges of flesh. The acrid scent of raw alcohol, mingled with the baser tones of blood, made her stomach churn.

  Tying off a stitch, the doctor admired his handiwork. “The bullet went straight through without shattering.”

  “The bullet is gone?” asked Mary.

  “Oh yes,” agreed the doctor, rolling Vaughn over to get to the hole on his back. Taking his scissors, he snipped neatly away at what remained of Vaughn’s jacket and shirt, clearing the area over the wound. “The bullet didn’t have far to travel, just through this area above his collarbone, here. He was quite lucky it wasn’t lower.”

  At Mary’s look, he elaborated, “The bullet went through the fleshy part of his shoulder. Painful, but seldom fatal. Had the bullet struck a few inches farther down, you would have had no need for my services.” The doctor poked professionally at Vaughn’s back. “Had it struck here, it would have gone right through his heart.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Oh do not die….

  But yet thou canst not die, I know;

  To leave this world behind, is death,

  But when thou from this world wilt go,

  The whole world vapors with thy breath.

  —John Donne, “A Fever”

  “You mean it would have killed him,” she said.

  “Instantly,” agreed the doctor. “Or the next thing to it. As I said, your friend is very fortunate.”

  He glanced speculatively up at her over Vaughn’s body as he pronounced the word “friend.”

  “My cousin and I,” Mary emphasized, “are both very grateful for your prompt assistance.”

  The surgeon eased the long end of a bandage around Vaughn’s side, coaxing it beneath his back. “A curious man,” he said conversationally, “might wonder how, if your cousin was watching the recruits, he came to be shot in the back.”

  “A clever man,” returned Mary pointedly, “knows better than to ask profitless questions.”

  A veteran of countless illegal duels, the surgeon didn’t need to be warned twice. Tying off the end of a bandage, he patted Vaughn’s side with a professional air. “He’ll need the stitches out in a day or so. You’ll want to give him cold compresses for the fever.”

  Mary looked at Vaughn’s gray face, his forehead clammy with sweat. “What fever?”

  “They all get fever,” the surgeon said cheerfully, closing his bag with a distinct click. “The fever kills more than the bullets. You just have to hope it won’t be too high.”

  “How very encouraging.” Doctors were such nasty little men, all puffed up with their Latin phrases and useless diagnoses. One would think he could at least offer to do something about the fever, rather than just predict it. “Is there anything one can do to bring the fever down?”

  “You could bleed him.” The doctor produced a small brass box from his bag. At a touch, the box sprung open, revealing twelve sharp blades, positioned with all the care modern medical science could afford. “Bleeding will release the corrupt blood and lower the fever.”

  Mary glanced down at the pile of blood-soaked cloth on the floor by the bed, the remnants of Vaughn’s shirt and jacket. “He’s lost enough blood already.”

  The surgeon refrained from giving the appropriate medical lecture. It would only be wasted on a woman. Shrugging, he took up his bag. “Hot and cold compresses, then.”

  Mary looked to the butler, who was waiting by the door. “Your fee will be seen to.” She nodded to the butler. “If you would?”

  The butler moved smoothly forwards to usher the surgeon from the room.

  “If you’re quite sure about the bleeding…,” the surgeon tossed over his shoulder.

  “Quite sure,” Mary said firmly.

  She stayed sentinel by the side of the bed until the surgeon was safely out of the room. Sprawled on top of the coverlet, Lord Vaughn was by no means an inspiring sight. He looked, in fact, rather as though he had come out the wrong side of a barroom brawl, with his coat and shirt half torn away and the dark stain of opium-enhanced wine snaking down hi
s cheek and onto his chest. Blood streaked his chest below the white bandage the doctor had wound around his shoulder, where red already showed in an ominous circle against the white.

  Vaughn’s skin showed surprisingly dark against the white band, dusted with dark hair. There was the line of an old scar near the join of his shoulder, a crescent-shaped slash, as though someone had aimed for his heart and missed. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time someone had attempted to kill Lord Vaughn. Mary shouldn’t have been surprised. A decade ago, London had been more wild, with duels fought by dawn on Hampstead Heath and gangs of toughs ready to prey on inebriated gentlemen. And heaven only knew what he had got up to on the Continent. Vaughn’s chest, seamed, scarred, and lightly muscled, suggested that he had been more than equal to any adventures.

  It would be too absurd for him to have survived so much only to be felled by one little bullet in the domestic dullness of Hyde Park. It was just the sort of cosmic joke Vaughn would appreciate. Only this time, it was on him.

  “Madam.” It was several moments before Mary realized that the insistent noise buzzing behind her ear was a voice, and that it was intended for her.

  Dragging her gaze away from Vaughn, Mary realized that the butler—what was his name?—had returned and was standing just behind her.

  He would be entirely within his rights to suggest that she leave. Aside from thrusting her own way into the house, her position was entirely anomalous. Despite her lies to the surgeon, she wasn’t cousin, or ward, or wife. She was a nameless woman—a nameless woman with a tendency for appearing at inappropriate hours of the night, in whose company the master of the house had been severely wounded. And even if she were a proper sort of guest, her presence in the master’s bedchamber would be highly improper.